Monthly Archives: July 2009
Voting is now closed, and we have a winner for my ticket to the Business Innovation Factory (BIF-5) conference October 7-8, 2009 in Providence, RI. Here again were the Three Finalists:Creating a Bachelor of Innovation by Dr. Terrance E. Boult, University of Colorado at Colorado SpringsBreaking Innovation Barriers by Looking Beyond by Vyoma Kapur, Colspark LLCA Nightmare on Innovation Street by Brad Barbera, KAB Business ResearchAnd the winner is…Vyoma Kapur of Colspark LLC!Colspark seeks to foster greater collaboration between academia and businesses. They believe in creating a dynamic knowledge and information flow between colleges and companies. They do this by giving college students a platform to solve companies’ sales, marketing and business problems. By bringing students and companies closer together, they create an environment where the best and the brightest are rewarded. Using the principles of open innovation, effective ideas and solutions are generated for companies. Colspark endorses open communication … Continue reading
The Wall Street Journal reported this week on the huge price being paid in health-care spending due to America’s rapidly expanding waistlines: $147B. How are we as innovators leading companies to address this head on? Lecturing, hectoring and “education” aren’t changing what’s on America’s plate, or at least not quickly enough. I recommend reading Hank Cardello’s book “Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s Really Making America Fat.” As a former exec at Coca-Cola and General Mills, he knows the institutional challenges of bringing Health & Wellness (H&W) innovation to market. He also has smart strategies for overcoming them. Similarly at our firm, we refuse to give up on major Food & Beverage (F&B) category innovation that improves health. We’re especially excited by five H&W vectors we believe are poised to explode in F&B innovation. We advocate innovating with… The Pleasure Principle – Healthier food that tastes better than not-so-healthy choicesNext-Wave … Continue reading
“Innovation can never be risk-free, but you can certainly make sure you look before you leap.”Ever since innovation became the buzzword du Jour, a lot of people seem to have lost their ability to tell smart ideas from stupid ones. Case in point: the financial “innovations” (read: stunningly stupid loan products) that kicked off the trillion-dollar economic meltdown mess we’re currently in. The simplistic notion that “new equals good” has often been a recipe for grand-scale disaster, just as it was in the dotcom debacle at the turn of the millennium. And when the doo-doo inevitably hits the fan, it’s all too easy to level the blame at innovation per se rather than admit to being a bonehead. Here’s why many ideas that are labeled “innovations” are just plain stupidity.Simply put, innovation goes wrong (sometimes big time) when an organization over-commits to an idea before validating the key assumptions on … Continue reading
I had the opportunity to attend Brightidea’s Birds of a Feather (BOF 3.0) event at Chevron’s headquarters the other day. For those of you not familiar with Bright Idea Birds of a Feather events, they are periodic events for innovation practioners from Brightidea customers (e.g. HP) and non-customers (e.g. Chevron) to get together to discuss innovation challenges and share practical experiences peer-to-peer. The third incarnation of BOF was hosted in Chevron’s ‘Innovation Zone’ – a flexible space used to inspire creativity where:everything is on wheelsthe space can be used for multiple purposes (including prototyping, recruiting, training, sharing)people can experiment with co-location of groupsinformal meetings and mentoring can take place when the space is not scheduledThe day was a mix of presentations from Chevron and HP and unconference open-sharing sessions, interspersed with breaks for people to just talk one-to-one with colleagues from other companies.The Chevron KickoffPeter Breunig and Jack Anderson of … Continue reading
The second of the Brightidea Birds of a Feather (BOF 3.0) unconference discussion sessions I attended posed the question – Is there such a thing as innovation fatigue?Here are some of the key insights and comments from the session:You can’t run people in crisis mode forever. If you create an innovation panic, your people and organization will get innovation fatigue.How can you throttle up and down both the top and bottom of the innovation funnel?Sometimes you accumulate too many ideas to develop, and other times you don’t have enough.Any innovation approach should pay attention to the pacing and have learning built in (a feedback loop)How much change can people handle?Should innovation be part of the regular job for everyone in the organization?Should you have an annual innovation plan?Would more than two innovation jams per year be too much?Should ideation really be fully separate from implementation?Is it possible for people to … Continue reading
The first of the Brightidea Birds of a Feather (BOF 3.0) unconference discussion sessions I attended posed the question – What are the key elements of building a culture of innovation and what is the leader’s role?Here are some of the key insights and comments from the session:There was a great deal of discussion around the role of the leader in creating a culture of innovation by being a direction setter, venture-capitalist, talent scout, mentor, and silo-buster.It was also felt that is was important that respect for people be demonstrated or the culture will not change.Accountability vs. Authority – Often times people are made accountable for achieving innovation gains, but are not provided the authority to actually work to make it happen.”You are going to inspect what you expect.” It is important to strike the balance between operational excellence and ideating/initiating growthIt is worth considering the use of open book … Continue reading
